Unlike most early Jazz musicians who called themselves Doc or Professor, Charles L. Cooke (September 3, 1891 – December 25, 1958), really had a doctorate degree in music from the Chicago College of Music. Cooke is remembered today for his stint as a conductor and musical director of the Orchestra at Paddy Harmon’s Dreamland Ballroom from 1922 to 1927 in Chicago.His Dreamland Orchestra employed many of Chicago’s top musicians, including Freddie Keppard, Jimmie Noone, Johnny St. Cyr and Luis Russell. In 1927 his engagement at the Dreamland ended and he took his orchestra to Chicago’s Municipal Pier and then to the White City Ballroom. In 1930 he moved to New York and was staff arranger at R.K.O. and Radio City Music Hall. He remained there until the early 1940s and then retired. Charles Cooke was usually billed under the name of Doc Cook.
| Cookie’s Gingersnaps | Cook and his Dreamland Orchestra |
| Doc Cook and his 14 Doctors of Syncopation |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
